Amber Spice
“If I squint, I think I can see some blue and green in the distance. It's not just a mirage, is it, Merry Weather? I can't really get the kind of vantage point you pegasi can.”
“Huh. I'd tell you ‘Not with that attitude’, but I don't see even you growing wings through sheer force of will,” she says as she absently refills my waterskin. “That said, no, it's not a mirage. That out there is the Southwest Oasis. One of my favorites, truth be told. It's got the biggest still, so I can afford to be a lot freer with the firewater in my other job.”
“That's good to hear. I've been wanting a good drink for weeks, but it's never quite felt like the right occasion to break out the mead I brought with me. I mean, once I run out of it, it's gone…”
I trail off in thought as I take my refilled waterskin back from her. Running out of things isn't something that I like thinking about much. Half the reason I tried to become the Royal Chef in the first place was so I could get relatively unfettered access to saffron. But out here, I can't just badger some undercook to search the pantry or put in a requisition if I don't have enough oats on-hoof. For the next almost-year, at least, I'm going to have to learn to make do or do without.
“So, uh,” I say, looking back up to her as she lounges on her somewhat depleted cloud, “what is an oasis, exactly?”
“Oh, it's only the thing we've been marching towards for the past month. You didn't think we kept moving all the time, did you? Where did you figure the food came from?”
I give her a horn-shrug. “I guess I just never really thought about it. I was kind of preoccupied.”
“Even when you were bored stiff?”
“Especially when I was bored stiff.”
She gives a shrug of her own, in the pegasus fashion. “You are an interesting pony, Amber Spice.”
She rolls onto her back, continuing to look down at me. “Come to think of it,” she says, “being two weeks out from either oasis, you were about as close to the middle of nowhere as you could be while still being on a caravan route. Lucky you, huh?”
“Uh, yeah. Lucky me.” About two seconds pass before I decide that that's another thing I don't want to think too much about. “You still haven't really answered my question, though.”
“Oh, right. Well, an oasis is a patch of green and blue in the middle of the desert, usually perched atop an underground river or aquifer. That's pretty-much a hole underground with a lot of water in it.
“What that means for us is we can be a bit more free with our water use. We can grow crops, bathe, or even play in the water if we want to. I know my Silver loves that.”
I give my shoulder a sniff, and it wrinkles my nose. I'd stopped noticing my smell after the first week, but stars do I miss daily baths. My once pristine, fluffy coat is kind of a greasy mess of mats, too, which is something I'll rectify at the first opportunity.
It's… It's nothing some shampoo, conditioner, and a good deal of brushing won't fix.
That's not the only thing she mentioned, though. “So, uh, what kinds of crops do you grow there? I've seen olives, pickles, and dates, and you have to make those pitas out of some kind of grain, but do you grow anything else? Or do you only grow food you can preserve easily? I don't think I've seen anything good for fermenting, unless you count cheese…”
“Hmm…” She flops onto her back again in thought. “I can't say we do much with fermenting pomegranates, but grapes and peaches are the pita and yogurt of the distiller's art. We grow both of those there. Some people ferment wheat or milk, too, but I've never had a taste for the stuff.”
The only food I recognized in that sentence was milk, and I'm going to continue not thinking about it or the brewing thereof.
“So, uh, what's a peach?”
“What's a peach?” she says before flying a quick loop and landing back on her cloud. “Only solid, squishy evidence that Terra loves her children and wants them to be happy!
“Oh Spicy, you'll love peaches. They're big, orange, and fuzzy, and they take a lot of water to grow. Kinda like you, come to think of it. And they are just so sweet and juicy! Which might, idunno, make them kinda messy for you to eat? They're totally worth it, though. You'll see.”
—_(\\_/\_//)_—
Horizon
Sweep and I touch down in the early afternoon, beneath the shade of the orchard's date palms and peach trees
“As ‘nice’ of a thing it is for you to do, I don't want to catch wind of your snapping up any guards’ shifts this time. You've done your job, so rest!”
I only wince slightly at the veiled accusation. “You won't. I'm done trying to work myself into an early grave, remember?”
“Even if some cloud-hugging lazybones asks you nicely?” Sweep says, quirking his mouth into his signature horse-apple-eating grin.
“I'll tell him to try giving a camel flying lessons, and then get back to me.”
“Ha!” Sweep hops up to snatch a ripe peach from a nearby tree. “I'll hold you to that, Rize. After all, anywhere you go, I go, and I'm looking forward to many long years of sitting on clouds heckling youngsters in our future.”
He tears into the peach like he hasn't eaten in weeks, which, since he hasn't had anything but pitas, milk, and whatever the caravan could preserve from previous stops, is sort of true. I grab a peach of my own, lie down, and start eating.
‘I wonder what Spicy will do with these…’
“So,” Sweep says, already done with his peach, “If you're done rendering yourself a complete social outcast for the moment, whatcha gonna do now?”
“Hadn’t really thought about it,” I say between mouthfuls of sweet, juicy peach. “Maybe I'll check on the Tornado Trio, see what kind of trouble they're getting into. Dust Devil hasn't tried to bother me at work in a while, and I'm starting to miss those little sand flies.”
“Any plans involving a certain peach-looking mare?”
I squint at him. “Who are you—Oh. Right. Amber Spice. I guess she does kind of look like a peach,” I say, looking down at the remains of mine. “I guess I could stand to show her around, since she's probably never been to an oasis before. Maybe make up for the last time I gave her a guided tour.”
‘Come to think of it, I have no idea what her old home on Terra's Horn was like, aside from “colder”.
‘Maybe it's time I took her up on her offer to exchange stories…’
“Hello? Rize? You in there, buddy? Need me to organize a search party?”
I roll my eyes and kick some dirt at him. “No, just thinking. You should try it sometime.”
—_(\\_/\_//)_—
Amber Spice
I wouldn't have dreamed of taking a cold bath back on Terra's Horn, but here I am.
I mean, I could have just magically heated the water in my collapsible tub myself – heating spells have always been pretty easy for me – but—
“Oooh,” I say with a slight shudder while slipping into the water. “This is nice.”
I can practically feel the weeks of grit and grime floating away already, even if I know it'll take actual surfactants and scrubbing before I make any appreciable progress there. ‘Actually…’
I stand up, water cascading from my thick, matted coat, and look down to see the bottom of the tub already starting to resemble a riverbed. *Snrk*. “At this rate, the tub will need a bath of its own when I'm done.
“Ah, what can you do,” I say to myself as I pour some shampoo into my coat and start massaging it into a proper lather.
This was a lot easier back when I had servants. The invasion of privacy was annoying at first, but sunspots was it nice to not need two mirrors to be sure I got everything. Still, I managed without them for most of my life…
That said, it doesn't take me all that long to find the old rhythm. I start whistling a familiar tune as my thoughts begin to wander.
'How did you survive three weeks without a bath?’ I come across a particularly nasty mat in my coat and start teasing it apart. ‘And did you seriously forget to brush that entire time?! Oh well. We're fixing that now, anyway.
‘So, Spicy, what are you going to do now? Work at the mess tent a little less, probably, since there'll be fewer guards and more cooks while we're here at the oasis…
‘Now who do I ask if I can have a peach?’
As I'm using a telekinetic scoop to rinse some conditioner from my mane, I look up to see some familiar little faces peeking over the edge of a date palm frond. Three of them.
“What? You've never seen a mare bathe before?”
Silver Lining falls to the ground with a soft, rustly thud, while Dust Devil and Dive Bomber flutter down softly on losing their grip on the leaf.
“I'm fine!” he assures us.
Turning her head from Silver Lining to me, Dive Bomber says “Well yeah, but usually they bathe in pairs in one of the ponds, and preen each other's wings afterwards.”
“And they don't usually dump mysterious potions in their hair,” Silver Lining chimes in while disentangling himself from a viney plant laden with huge, purple berries.
“Yeah,” Dust Devil says, narrowing his eyes. “What were those for?”
As much fun as it would be to take this opportunity to mess with them, I've got a bath to finish.
I submerge myself once more before stepping out of the tub and shaking myself vigorously. Then I start casting a heating spell at the base of my coat and mane to help the desert air absorb the rest of the water from my hair.
“Those ‘potions’,” I say, using my forehooves to mimic pegasus wing-quotes, “were shampoo and conditioner. The first was to clean away dirt and grease, while the second was to keep my hair healthy and soft.”
I stop channeling the heating spell, confident that the desert air can take care of the rest, and reach into my bag for my brushes.
It's a shame I'd never found an excuse to break them out before now. Their yellow-orange and pastel yellow bristles would have been good reminders of home…
As I'm pulling my diamond-shaped hairbrush towards my mane, I find there's a wide-eyed filly attached to it.
I goggle at her.
“Is— Is that… real gold? Used to make a hair brush?!”
“Well not pure gold,” I say while very lightly trying to shake my mane brush loose from Dive Bomber's grip. “It's only three-quarters pure. We could have gone purer, but Mom thought I should have a brush that would last.”
Dive Bomber refuses to be dislodged, using her wings to remain stable in the air. “You must have been a really important unicorn. I've only ever seen sheikhs and commanders wear gold, and you have a whole hairbrush made of it. Sandstorms, not even my mom can get her wings on gold, and working with fancy metals and glass is her job!”
Huh. Come to think of it, almost all of the metal I've seen here has been in weapons and cookware.
“Um, Dive Bomber?” I say. “Could you, maybe, hold onto my hairbrush a little less tight? If your mom has taught you anything about gold, and I suspect she has, then she's told you that gold is soft and easily damaged, and this hairbrush is important to me.”
She's still latched onto it, scanning its every inch with impossibly wide eyes.
“And then there's the fact that it's a hairbrush, it's my hairbrush, and I am possessed of copious amounts of hair in imminent need of brushing.”
No dice. She's still glued to it like Outta Stock after one of my better lab pranks. “It's… so beautiful…”
‘Maybe if I try heating the metal so she drops it? No, bad Spicy! She's just a filly. This calls for a softer approach.’
“This hairbrush was a gift from my mother, to remind me of her while I'm away. The fact that it's made of gold isn't nearly as important as who it's from.”
She finally looks up from her prize to meet my eyes.
“I'll… let you look at it later, if you want,” I continue. “Just as long as you promise not to damage it, or melt it down, or use it to dig for buried treasure.”
“Um, okay. Sorry, Miss Spice.”
There's a word I've picked up recently: ‘sheepish’. At first I thought people were comparing my voluminous coat to that of the livestock, but what it really means is an expression displaying contrite chagrin. That's the look Dive Bomber is wearing as she releases my hairbrush and flutters back to her friends under the date palm.
“Ha!” Dust Devil says as I try to brush my mane and tail into some semblance of order before they completely dry out. “The way you keep latching onto anything shiny you see, you'd think you were part dragon.”
“You're hilarious, Dusty” she shoots back.
“Y'know, that would explain a lot,” Silver chimes in, counting off on his primaries. “The colors, the obsessions with speed and metal, the temper…”
“RRAAAAAAARGH!”
“Look out, Silver. She's trying to breathe fire at us!” he shouts as he rockets away, cackling as Dive Bomber pursues.
“Hey guys, wait for me!” Silver Lining shouts as he gallops after them.
I hear some faint chuckling on the wind, and turn to smirk up at my new verbal sparring partner. “Enjoy the show, Rize?”
He alights a few feet to my left, and produces a fuzzy orange ball from a pouch with his wing.
“It was an alright performance. Excellent props, but the soliloquy could use some work.”
I let out an amused snort. “Since when did you know the word ‘soliloquy’?”
“I was engaged to a storyteller at one point, and I would listen to what she had to say.”
“I'll try not to faint from that shocking revelation.”
He tosses the orange fuzzball back and forth between his wings.
“So,” I say, “you seem a lot more energetic today than… well, ever, really.” And he mentioned his fiancé without so much as wincing. “What's different?”
“Well, I'm not tired from a full day of flying or a year-plus of self-loathing, and I'm finally in a place where I can enjoy good food and good company. Speaking of, welcome to the Southwest Oasis. Have a peach.”
He tosses the peach to me, and I catch it with my telekinesis and bring it to my mouth to take a bite.
He goes on to say something about another tour, and about making up for past blunders, but I can't really hear him over the experience of the sweetest, most fragrant, and juiciest food I'd never expected to find in the desert.
“Oh…” I moan. “I'm going to be able to do so much with these…”